"The first plane hit when we were trying to find a book. We just heard a noise and said, "What the heck was that?" Then my friend's dad came and got her. . . . We heard a hundred fire trucks. We all started making jokes about evacuating the school. . . . By then five kids were gone because their parents had picked them up. Then we went to the gym. They read a story ("Donovan's Word Jar"). Then all the power went out. I think they took our gym lights away because they needed the power to have the fire engines communicate with each other. Then we got evacuated for real. - Mason Grassfield, Grade 3 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/weekinreview/23WORD.html